O.Henry Essay, Research Paper

Despite his rough life, unconventional style, and mixed thoughts and reviews, O.

Henry is now considered one of the very best short story authors there ever

were.

O. Henry’s life influenced his writings in many ways. William Sydney Porter was

born into a typical middle class family in 1862. He helped his uncle in a

pharmacy during his teen years, until moving to Texas to help on a ranch. There

in Texas he found his wife Athol Estes. Later he found work as a bank teller.

When money was repeatedly reported missing from the bank he was accused of

embezzlement. Hearing this he fled to New York and became a reporter. These

jobs helped him to write about everyday people, which is what he was. Almost

everyone can relate to characters in his stories. This is why his stories are

so widely spread to a variety of people. Not only did he write about himself

and the people in his life, but he also wrote about his surroundings of the

inner cities of New York and rural areas of Texas. The moving around helped him

not to get fixed on writing about similar actions or events. It kept the reader

interested because his stories were always different, but they could always

relate. A few

months after he fled he had gotten word that his wife was seriously ill. He

rushed back to Austin. After his wife had pasted away he was found guilty of

embezzlement and sentenced to five years in a federal penitentiary in Ohio.

There he was released after three years for his help in the penitentiary’s

pharmacy and his good behavior. Being in jail for three years helped him turn

his life around and started his carrier as an author known by his pen name of O.

Henry. For quite a few years O. Henry led a happy life. Then in his early

forties, despite the success of his stories and his second marriage, he slipped

into alcoholism and depression. In 1910 he died unhappy and poor with less than

a dollar to his name.

The Legend of San Jacinto by O. Henry shows many characteristics of his style.

This particular story is told in an omniscient point of view. The story starts

out with a main character who is a reporter looking to interview someone about

the legend of San Jacinto. He created this character because of his former

experiences when he was a reporter. He goes to San Jacinto, the place where the

legend had occurred, and finds an old man in a run down hut. Henry probably

created this character because of how isolated he felt when he was a rancher in

Texas. When the reporter asks the man to tell him what he knows about the

legend the man says his mother told him who heard the story from her father and

so on. The man then continues to tell how the story was passed down and

eventually the reporter gets frustrated because of the man rambling on but not

actually telling the legend. The climax then occurs when the reporter yells out

that the man doesn’t know what he is talking about and leaves. The ending is a

typical

ending for Henry. He is very well known for his twist endings. His stories

usually contain unexpected and baffling resolutions and d?nouements.

O. Henry has had good and bad criticism about his short stories. “He had no

propaganda, no view to expound, no lesson, in the meaner sense, to teach,” says

Stephen Leacock. This is a very good statement to some up just about all of

Henry’s stories. In the Legend of San Jacinto there is no point throughout the

story or no lesson to learn. Some of his endings even leave the reader confused

because of such endings. Some times his stories are so short and senseless they

seem more like a minor episode of another plot rather than a story themselves.

Many praise him by saying he is known as being the best short story author there

ever was. This is because of his characters and his endings. His stories

appeal to all because of his generic yet easy to relate to characters. People

could easily see what the characters were about.

O. Henry was one of the best short story authors there were. Despite his the

loss of his first wife and his problems at his banking job he managed to turn

his life around and become a very successful author. Some critics loved him

while other disapproved of him saying his stories were nonsense. With his

distinct twist

endings and familiar characters O. Henry had an instantly recognizable style

that had never been seen before.